This worldwide pandemic has not only thrown our lifestyle overboard by changing people’s normal school or work life, but it has interrupted one of humans most basic necessities: Sleep! Sleep is what nourishes and contributes to our mental and physical health. Skipping sleep can be very harmful since lack of sleep causes us to mentally and physically feel like a walking train wreck. Sleep is a vital human necessity to our wellbeing, it’s just as important as the food we eat or the air we breath. Especially for high school students who tend to have the habit of sleeping little to no hours in a day, even though they need more than seven hours of sleep a day. With school becoming virtual now, we beg the question if online classes play a factor in affecting students sleep schedules.

If teachers already thought that students with a higher screen time of more than six hours was bad, then it just got worse since virtual learning has inevitably increased almost double the hours that students spend on their devices. According to the National Sleep Foundation, “Excess screen time, especially later in the evening, can have a detrimental impact on sleep. Not only can it stimulate the brain in ways that make it hard to wind down, but the blue light from screens can suppress the natural production of melatonin, a hormone that the body makes to help us sleep.”  So one of the main reasons teens may have insomnia is the amount of time they spend on their phones especially since they are on their phones during the night time which is bad for their sleep schedules and their devices emit blue light.

Many students are guilty of procrastinating and pushing assignments until they eventually pile up. Doing this causes students to panic and stress over the unfinished assignments as well as working for hours on their digital devices sometimes barely getting any sleep. This affects their performance in their class work and the online classes aren’t helping at all.

“Being at home doing online classes has absolutely changed my sleep schedule,” explained senior Zaira Linares.  “I sleep super late and only get a few hours of sleep because I get a lot of anxiety from not finishing my school work. I’ve never felt comfortable doing my work at home which is why I joined programs where I could stay to do my work. Now that’s not available to me.”

Many students like Zaira have been affected by the quarantine under the stress of not finishing school, staying at home feeling trapped, trying to stay positive when everything feels helpless and the factor of not being able to sleep just adds to the concern of students’ mental health.

“Being in quarantine and having to take online classes has affected me physically and mentally,” expressed senior Zayra Meza.  “I’m not getting enough sleep and feel trapped. Being at home almost 24/7 makes me feel alone even with my family around. I get lost in my own thoughts and before this happened, I was able to go out and escape it but now, I’m here stressing over if I will have to take online class as a freshman in college in the fall.”